23 august 2006: your girl is lovely, hubble.

So basically…..
we’re all like, not here anymore, right?

I thought I’d check in and no one has posted in a century. I see LJ tryin’ hard to keep up with the blogger converts, and it makes me feel kinda sad in a way, but you know, whatever.

Remember Diaryland?

I used to have a diary on diaryland. I wonder if it’s still there. I wonder what it says. It’s probably mostly me talking about food (because that was all I could think about when I was trying to eat as little of it as possible) and about random people at Michigan who, in their own uninentional way, made me feel hopelessly alienated, lonely and scared.

This thing though, is a serious diary. I should print it all out before it gets tossed.

I only write on my blog now. It’s not so personal, but I think that’s a good thing:

This Girl Called Automatic Win

02 may 2006: But I Just Had to Laugh, I saw the Photograph

hey, you. i’m writing a book.

It’s been so long since I updated, I can hardly think of where to begin.

I’m supposed to be doing this story for Marie Claire - ‘match the girl with her exes’ - and I feel stuck and frustrated about it. Basically it’s me and three other girls, we’ll do a photo shoot and readers will match us to thumbnails of our exes. Marie Claire loves doing matchy stories.

(I was originally roped into this while at nerve, under the guise that a major mag needs girls who were friends with their exes… which is not what the story is about after all…but now I’m trapped!)

So I gave her my whole rundown of all my relationships, and the editors wanted to use John, Jeremiah and Lo. (Of course, Lo isn’t really an ex, but we find humor in these sorts of opportunities).

Lo was pumped to do it and thought it would be fun. John reluctantly agreed. The editor thought Jeremiah would be great for the “surprise” factor (he’s a cop! and a republican!). But he won’t do it. In fact… he won’t even talk to me!

I can’t burn this bridge — I love Marie Claire, and if I ever save a rainforest tribe in South America, I want to be able to pitch them an article about it. Perhaps they know that… as a writer, I want the connection, I want to meet the editors, and I think a photo shoot would be fun. For that reason I’m willing to do this.

But I feel bad having to talk John into it, because his reservations are completely valid—they are also mine. I know it’s just a tiny picture of them, and a few fun quotes from me about the joy of our union, and I didn’t say anything negative about anyone (except maybe myself), and left out all the ditry details…. but still, it’s odd to put yourself out there like that, on print, especially when we both have careers in the arts and hope to be more successful than we are now one day.

I think in the interview, which was actually really fun, and the girl doing the article is totally sweet and cool and really succesfull—I totally envy her—but now she wants me to ask Marc to do it because Jeremiah won’t. Because apparently he’s also a Republican (I had no idea at the time when we dated, ‘cause it was 2000, and politics didn’t matter like they do now).

Right now, I’m hoping somehow she’ll just forget, which is unlikely because she emails me a lot. Like every day. I just want it to go away.

10 april 2006: new blog - marielynbernard at blogspot dot com!

hellllo friends!!!

though i will continue to post on livejournal when i have something i want to say about myself, i have started a blog that will be more, um, open to varied audiences. please read it, kids, okay, it’s good for you.

This Girl Called Automatic Win

31 Mar 2006: i could go crazy on a night like tonight, when summer’s beginning to give up her fight

“You can’t ever really know a person and if you think you can, you’re living in a dream world.”

David, Six Feet Under

Who’s having fun in the dream world these days, anyhow?

Matty likes to give people nicknames and he used to call Krista “Drama Club.” Funny, of course, that for so many months my life was almost entirely consumed by HIS drama.

But ultimately, y’all - life IS drama. So let’s just quit it, yeah? With acting like “drama” is an unexpected, totally avoidable situation. And let’s just admit that drama happens. Drama is part of life. We don’t grow up, we don’t grow out of it…

Lo & I had our party. It was anchored by two very negative events (assault! theft!) and lead to another (fighting!)

There was a very satisfactory middle and it was good to see Lainey and Chase in Brooklyn, Katy & Nicole & Eunice in a room with windows, Stephen & Cameron & Kat out of the agency office, Matty who came from Long Island, Krista full of the happiness she deserves (she got into Yale’s MFA program!), good to see Alana and Malaina and everyone I don’t see enough..,

In the morning Matty demanded the shitty coffee that I allegedly make (everyone thinks I make it too strong) and then when the shit hit the fan, he tried to be a voice of reason when the madness broke. Oh, the irony…

I dreamt about Scot, it was strange and vivid. Sometimes I miss being in love.

In my dream he wrote me a letter about how impossible it is to plan our lives, and I guess that’s the truth.

As Lo said…all we can do is get up and make coffee…see what happens..

We all try so hard, though, you know? We try really hard to make everything effortless.
If I start thinking about next week or last week, this week slips away.

People love and break up and go to work and all that.
People fight and hate and love and go to work again.

People fight and hate and hate and it never gets better it just ends.

Things end. Things evolve and sometimes things just CHANGE.

That doesn’t make it easier, at all.

But it makes it acceptable, at least. Something that’s part of all this
instead of something that we eventually learn how to avoid, that we grow out of.

If only we’d done something differently or known better.

But I have these things:

I have the amazing feeling of being surrounded by new friends that I’ve made since I moved here a year ago, which for a socially retarded cynical brat like myself is quite an accomplishment,

my book, which excites me,

I Am Not Quite Myself These Days, which you all need to read,

the way Lo hops around the apartment when she’s getting ready to go and making her peanut butter toast and checking out her hot ass in the mirror,

the way that Lo always hears me coming up the stairs and opens the door before I get there,

the unadulterated joy of netflix,

leisha hailey, who rules, eternally, and jenny’s amazing description of her wedding outfit in the season finale,

the spring, FUCKING FINALLY,

the fact that every now and then, something actually does almost make me cry,

but most of all; words.

like the stupid ones i’m writing right now.

13 march 2006: is that a periscope in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

I hate it when characters die on TV shows that I like (RIP Dylan’s wife on 90210! RIP Nate on Six Feet Under! RIP Jen on Dawson’s Creek!).

Yes, I’d heard rumors that Dana was gonna to die (yes, “rumors” means that I sometimes cruise L Word fansites…but Chase-the-Spoiler-Queen certainly helped in this regard..:-)), and I knew it would happen on Sunday.

But OMG MY HEART BROKE OPEN. I think the episode was well done (well, aside from Preggers Bette talking nonsense with the weirdos at the bus station) and I also thought the splicing of Sharmen’s of makeup sex with Dana’s sudden death was an emotional cannonball capped off by the intensity of Alice’s dead-on heartbreaking reaction to the death. It killed me. I died with Dana.

I felt utterly emotionally drained afterwards (still), but, well, RIP Dana…



At least she got to tell Alice she loved her again.

That was cute.

The fact that Alice and Dana will never have sex again is massively depressing.


In other news….isn’t this THE BEST PICTURE EVER???!!

06 march 2006: blood and fire are too much for these restless arms to hold

Jake, do you remember in high school when we used to stay up ‘til 4am on summer nights writing and reading and listening to music (in our own bedrooms, you know, but we’d talk about it ithe next day) and then wake up at 2 or 3pm and have breakfast and then our next meals we called them “Dinner Number One” and “Dinner Number Two” and how dinner number 2 always involved a lot of dairy: either in the greasy pizza cheese dripping from the firm crusts at Backroom, laid out on rectangular pieces of tin foil or those gooey sloshy milkshakes from Pizza House?

Do you remember at night when we’d lie on our jackets in the back of Josh’s pick-up truck and stare at the stars? And how he cut his hand open at Backroom Pizza so he could get sent home for a day and I thought wow that’s so hard core.

I’ve been working on a book lately, which has taken time. Reading so much, even without the five books I left in the taxi cab, and trying to be smart and creative and always interested.

On Friday, I was shuffled from room to room at the Metropolitan Hospital to see a doctor on the crisp edge of senility who listened to me talk for about five minutes and then diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, which I absolutely do not have. Meanwhile in the waiting room my psycho friend who I’d bene shuffled around with kept repeating:

Doctor, I have a lot of problems. I have a whole lot of problems. Can you see me now, I’m not normal. I used to have a Camaro.

If you want to communicate with Lo or I, I’d reccomend you please go check out the film Pretty Persuasian, so that you will know what we’re talking about when we ask Do You Fuck Dogs? WONDER TWINS!!!

do you fuck dogs?

On Friday night we watched lesbian movies and Lainey made cake that looked like breasts and Tara and I wanted pizza just not enough to move, except Haviland who I just met fast-forwarded to all the sex scenes in DEBS.

On Saturday Lo and I saw Red Light Winter in the west village. The humor was cutting and lovely and it was sad and fantastic, and I felt a bit extra cultured for spending a Saturday afternoon at the theater. Afterwards we had greasy food at the Waverly and in my head, I heard Fiest or maybe just Bob Dylan.

Last week I had Viatnamese and free wine with Krista, who reminds me of things.

I didn’t watch the oscars, I watched The L Word. I saw thirty seconds of The Oscars beforehand, enough for Jake Gyllenhal to remind me that I am at least 50% heterosexual.

Last weekend was cold and tense, this week eventually calmed into submission. I felt like I spent a lot of time on trains this past week, but maybe it’s cause I just spent two hours getting home without The L train. I relaly need to make paece with the JMZ.

There’s an Annie Lennox song from Lo’s new CD stuck in my head.

I fixed the TV and then it broke again.

I’ve started watching Season Five of The West Wing too. So I can be in almost complete denial that our country is going to hell in a handbasket at the promptings of a bone-head.

17 february 2006: home is where my habits have a habitat

Jenni took us to this event to corrupt us (“I wanna corrupt you girls!” and she left her phone behind. We went out to the Chelsea Piers where it was snowing to a boat called “The Frying Pan.” Crazy guest-listed event. We thought, is this really happening? I think, after all, that’s why we came to this city. Because this is where your lips turn black from the black vodka and at the end of the night you’re wearing underpants, fishnets, combat boots and a trench while begging for a cab in a blizzard. Our coats flapped behind us like stupid wings, like stupid black hearts, like real hearts, like love when it happens.

That was Saturday night.
Look at how me and Lauren do the same things in different contexts:




Friday night was….LAINEY’S BIRTHDAY!!! Everything made us laugh. We also both had an accident earlier (at the tanning booth) called (going tanning).

Lo and I went to Jane for Valentine’s Day, dressed up as a power lesbian couple. Blazers, collars, the works, the costume of the day was Bette Porter. Our gay waiter was a cutie and one of the best V-Days I’ve had in a while, even though my date met up with her boyfriend after.

I had some doozies in college, like the one Natalie and I spent crying in CVS or the time Christyne and I threw conversation hearts at boys from the roof (but then Scot came in to surprise me, like that proverbial white night. It was warm there, i liked it, it was magical thinking…)

I’m reading that book now: The Year of Magical Thinking.

At two o’clock today, I decided I wasn’t certain I could do any more work.
Then I opened almost all of the mail.

I love Macromedia

Matty is getting evicted. I don’t know what to do for him.

feb 04 2006: fifth in my five string serenade

five:

our first saturday morning, williamsburg is rain rain rain.

my room is finally, almost coming together?

i can’t wait to be settled in.
i saw matty yesterday, and the day before.

krista and i text compulsively.

i miss them a lot,
but that doesn’t take away from the fact that

i think this where i’m supposed to be.

i can see things really coming together here.
spectacularly.
you know, like my life.

i even like the hipsters?

feb 1 2006: second in my five string serenade

four: NOW

williamsburg is the cutest ever!!!

We still need cable and I still haven’t finished unpacking.
I HAVE SO MUCH SHIT.
But we do have Fresh-Direct, and music, and Love!

Lo & I met up with my old friends (from the Olive Garden) Bryan and Marc at Bryan’s new bar in midtown. The last time I saw them together was in ‘03 when they were living together and I was visiting Marc and we did shrooms and Ecstasy and smoked pot and drank all in the same night and I made love to a Milky Way bar and had stared at the ceiling, which had dancing rabbits on it, and thought, fuck, I’m totally falling in love with Scot, which made me feel really vulnerable, but also really hungry, and also sort of alive. When I got back to Michigan, I had $300 in roaming charges.

Anyhow so Lo & I sat at Bryan’s bar and played with our straws and were as charming as possible, considering. Almost anything’s fun when you know someone’s there to talk about it later, and understand. I thought about how it was weird that I had kissed all three of them, which reminded me of the old me. Before he got on the subway Bryan turned to us and said:

“Whatever you do, don’t get married.”

jan 30 2006: the third in my five string serenade

three: the weekend of january 29th

i stood on the kitchen counter to pull boxes off the top of the cabinets and grabbed onto a cabinet and ripped it right off the thing.
matty fixed it.

“matty is the strongest boy in the whole wide world. minus the racism, i’m kinda gonna miss him.”

-krista, via text, as they were doing the pre-feb-1st massive curbside drop.

yay for karma! i couldn’t have done it without Matty’s keep and his arms. then; boxes boxes boxes everywhere in brooklyn.

our home!